Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (31 page)

           
Ochen looked to Katya and said,
"In Horul's name! In the name of all the Younger Gods! For Calandryll's
sake, trust me!"

           
The Vanu woman studied him an
instant and then moved between the Kern and kiriwashen.

           
"I trust him." She looked
into Bracht's eyes, deep. "For all I like not the way of it, I see no
alternative."

           
"You say we should do
nothing?" Disbelief harshened the Kern's voice. "Stand here while
Calandryll likely dies?"

           
"Think, Bracht," she
urged. "Shall we go blundering through a night-dark wood, our every move a
herald of our coming? Tell the uwagi time runs out? I think that way we should
likely condemn Calandryll to death. I love him no less than you, but I suspect
our aid is useless now, while Ochen's magic at his command, and I say that's
our chiefest hope—to trust in his powers, in him."

           
"In him, perhaps," Bracht
allowed. "But this talk of Cennaire? What part has she to play?"

           
"I know not." Katya
shrugged. "Do we ask him?"

           
The night was dark, the moon waned
and not yet reborn, cloud had built, scudding between the land and the
impassive stars. Bracht's face was shadowed, the blue of his eyes hooded
between narrowed lids, his lips compressed, frustrated, and belligerent. For a
long moment he stared at Katya's face, then a slow sigh escaped and his
shoulders slumped, his right hand moving from his swordhilt.

           
"Think you so, then so be
it."

           
Katya nodded, her teeth flashing,
briefly white, as she smiled. At her back she heard Chazali's low grunt, sensed
the kiriwashen relax. "Let us ask him," she said.

           
But it was too late: a fire was
already built and burning, and Ochen squatted before the flames, staring
blank-eyed into the light. His hands were hidden in the wide sleeves of his
robe and his body was rigid, only his lips moving to spill out a torrent of
muttered syllables, too low, too guttural, to be heard, even were they
comprehensible. As he muttered, the scent of almonds wafted.

           
Bracht mouthed a curse,- Katya set a
hand upon his shoulder. Chazali, his veil lifted back, came to stand beside
them. "Ochen is a great sorcerer," he murmured, "in not very
much time he will be wazir-narimasu. As the lady Katya says—trust him, for if
any can help, it is he."

           
"And Cennaire?" Bracht
asked. "How shall she help?"

           
"That I do not understand,"
Chazali replied. "But if Ochen says she does, then she does."

           
The Kern blew breath between his
teeth. "Would that this world were simpler. Honest sword work, horses,
those I understand. But all this sorcery?" He gestured at the wazir,
raised his face to the dark and rolling sky. "That remains a
mystery."

           
"I understand it no better than
you," said Chazali. "And had I my way, we'd resolve matters as would
you—warrior against warrior in honest combat: there's honor in that—but that's
not the way of it, eh? Magic lives in this world of ours, and we must live with
it. Trust Ochen, my friend, for he can achieve what our blades may not."

           
"I've little other
choice," Bracht murmured, looking to the wazir, who sat immobile, as if
the animating spirit had quit his body for another place.

           
CENNAIRE had sensed the ambush in
the same instant Ochen had shouted his warning. She had learned enough from
observation, from listening to

           
Bracht, to Katya, that she utilized
her preternatural gifts in defense of the column. Consequently, she had grown
aware that the forest fell silent: she could hear only the steady drumming of
hooves, the clatter of armor, the sounds of horses and men, not bird song, or
the movements of the animals that inhabited the woods. Then Ochen had shouted
and she had seen the light of his magic flash out, and in the same instant the
flight of arrows, the shapes of the uwagi. She had screamed a warning, but it
had gone unheard—or mistaken for a scream of fear—as the attack came. Then all
had been confusion, and she had fought for her life as much as any there.

           
Her horse had panicked, terrified by
the weird- ling creatures that raced out of the shadows, and she had found
herself unseated, dumped unceremoniously on the dirt of the road as all around
her men shouted and fought.

           
She had risen, confused by the
tumult, angry enough she felt no fear, and seen the grey man- beasts carving a
path toward Calandryll. She had moved, .unthinking, in the same direction,
pushing limber amid the struggling throng, darting between horses, ducking
under swinging blades. A tensai— man, not were-creature—blocked her path, and
she had drawn her knife, moving as Katya had taught her to evade his blow,
drive her own blade deep into his belly. Gutted, he had moaned, falling
forgotten as she pushed on, intent only on reaching Calandryll before the uwagi
might slay him.

           
One, fiercer than its malignant kin,
was already close, reaching for him, he lowering his sword on Ochen's shout.
Cennaire had stabbed the beast, the knife sinking between its shoulders, and it
had snarled and turned on her. She clutched its wrist, turning the talons
aside, and snapped the arm, and the uwagi had only grunted and smashed its arm
back against her, oblivious of the hand—the paw?— that flapped useless at the
limb's end. She was thrown back then, tumbling, reminded of the were- men's
terrible strength, and found herself amid a sea of pounding hooves, all
confusion and battle shouts, scuttling undignified to safety. Climbing once
more to her feet in time to see the chestnut gelding bowled over, Calandryll
lifting from the saddle, a leg trapped as the horse went down. Seen the uwagi
close about him, drag him clear.

           
She had moved toward him, but before
she could reach him, the creatures had lifted him up and carried him off. And
she had gone after them—after him.

           
They had run into the forest, and on
its edge she had halted, wondering what she did. They could rend her, these
creations of the occult. She had seen their filthy work, and entertained no doubt
that they possessed such strength as could tear her limb from limb, leave her
alive still, perhaps condemned to eternal suffering.

           
She did not know for sure,- only
that Calandryll was taken and that senses deeper than those her revenancy gave
her told her to go on, to do what she could for him. What spoke to her then ran
deeper than blood, than bone, and she did not understand it, nor have the time
to consider it. Anomius's diktat—that the questers must survive to win the
Arcanum, that the ugly little warlock might take it for his own? That he should
grow wrathful, did she allow Calandryll taken captive, slain, without she
attempted his rescue? That she might earn the displeasure of the Younger Gods
did she do nothing?

           
No!

           
All she knew in that instant was
that Calandryll was taken: it did not occur to her to desert him.

           
She paused only to assess her path,
head raised, listening.

           
She heard the noises the uwagi made,
carrying off their burden, the sounds of snapping twigs, the pad of running
feet. She smelled them, a lingering, sour odor, sweat and decay mixed with the
pine scent of the woodland. She peered into the trees, the night no obstacle to
her vision.

           
Then she began to run, questing
anxious, vengeful.

           
The ground was soft with the
underlay of needles, of coarse grass. Thickets of brambles and brush
obstructed, ferns crushed sappy under her feet. Branches hung low and thick:
she ducked beneath them, or snapped them off uncaring, ignoring the twigs that
snagged her hair, sprang sharp against her face. She ran, pursuing, darting
around the massive boles of pines, cedars, larches, the dendrous perfumes
mingling with the reek of the uwagi, the scents of terrified animals, deer and
rabbits and wild hogs that fled the occult abominations, and through all that
the single odor of life: Calandryll's. That, she clung to, knowing that while
she could taste it on the air he lived still, that the uwagi had not slain him,
but bore him away for some reason she did not understand, nor cared to
consider,- only that so long as she could smell it he lived.

           
It was enough: she raced on.

           
And then she slowed, for ahead the
sounds of flight had ended.

           
She moved more cautiously now,
taking care where she placed her feet, avoiding obstacles, stalking the obscene
hunters. Then halted, pressing tight against the trunk of a pine, driving
herself into its shadow, watching, listening.

           
There was a clearing. Grass grew
thick where the encircling trees allowed the sun entry, dark now beneath the
clouded nighttime sky, but that no hindrance to her sight. Pines like the walls
of a temple ringed the space, and Cennaire was minded of the shrines dedicated
to Burash, in
Kandahar
, where circles of great stone pillars stood about the altar. But no
altar here, nor any god, save Tharn made his presence felt; neither priests,
unless the uwagi stood in stead.

           
And Calandryll the sacrifice, for he
stood ringed by such creatures as nightmares make, votaries of the Mad God.

           
Cennaire reached for her knife and
found it gone, likely still lodged in the back of the uwagi she had stabbed. No
matter: she had other, greater strengths. Silent as a hunting cat she stepped
forward, to the very edge of the trees, pausing in their shelter, studying the
tableau before her, not certain what she witnessed; no more sure what she
should do, what she
could
do.

           
CALANDRYLL opened his eyes onto
darkness, a strange pattern of shifting shades that blended so fast, one with
another, that he at first thought he once more traveled the plane of the
aethyr. Then he felt pain and realized he traversed a more mundane landscape, a
place of night-dark trees, of rustling branches overhanging and brief glimpses
of cloudy, moonless sky. His head throbbed; a leg— which, he could not be
sure—felt pounded, aching; his arms and his ankles were held as if set with
manacles. A smell invaded his nostrils, fetid and foul, like rotting flesh left
overlong in the sun: knowledge returned and he bit back the cry that threatened
to escape his mouth.

           
He was carried off by the uwagi,
held by the creatures and borne through the forest.

           
Panic threatened and he forced
himself to calm—at least a measure, imposed over the desperate thudding of his
heart, the terror that slunk about the edges of his awareness—and assessed his
situation.

           
It was a gloomy prospect. Four of
the uwagi held him firm, casually as if they bore a sack at breakneck speed
along trails too wild, too narrow that mounted warriors might easily follow.
The hands that held him were iron bands, unbreakable: he realized he lacked the
strength to fight free. The creatures leapt tree trunks, thickets, or charged
carelessly through. His teeth jarred in his jaw, his head spun, bouncing. He
feared the sheer speed of their going should kill him, break his neck, or
shatter his skull against a stump. The sword hung still from his belt, a
useless, tantalizing weight.

           
But he lived.

           
He did not understand why: the
changelings might have slain him, easily, back on the road; or killed him
within the shelter of the timber. But he lived: it was a straw he clutched
avidly.

           
He had no way of telling where they
went, save deeper into the forest, each loping pace taking him farther from his
comrades, from Ochen, and Chazali's kotu-zen. He felt horribly alone,
defenseless, wondering if perhaps the uwagi carried him off to some ritual
slaughter, a slow and painful dying. He felt the sword's quillons snag on
brambles, tear free, and wondered why they had not stripped him of the blade. A
flash of reason then, light through the darkness of fear: perhaps they could
not handle the blade. Perhaps the magic Dera had set in the steel rendered the
sword sacrosanct, beyond the touching of such foul things as the uwagi. Was
that of aid, hope? He thought on Ochen's warning—if not aid, then perhaps, at
least, escape. Did worse come to worst—and the chance present itself—he could
destroy his captors with the sword. He would die, but that should surely be a
swifter end, and less painful than anything the creatures planned for him. Save
if he took that course . . .